While this isn’t the place to repeat a lot of that material, it has been pertinent at various points to reflect on how the ‘too many cooks’ approach to the production led to some queering of the finished outcome, intentionally or not. The most detailed account is that found in Michael Richardson’s book, The Making of Casino Royale (1967) which I strongly recommend. Casino Royale was a chaotic production by all accounts. And in Casino Royale’s case there were more people involved than usual, including five directors and dozens of writers. Any film is, after all, the work of thousands of people. I think it’s bad form to disregard any film because I don’t personally like it. I don’t usually allow my personal feelings (the negative ones at least) about any film to intrude too much in my writing. Mostly though it was because I hazily remembered enjoying at least parts of it as a child and I didn’t want to taint my memories. I reckoned I’d last seen the film around twenty years ago and I was hesitant to repeat the experience, in large part because I knew it was far from adored by most in the Bond community. I’ll admit that getting to grips with the 1967 Casino Royale was low down my ‘to do’ list when I started Licence To Queer.

Casino royale original cast